Airports, Nursing Homes and Schools Brace for Disruption Without Haitian Workers

The Department of Homeland Security alerted employers this week that it had officially ended humanitarian protections for about 350,000 Haitian immigrants, triggering mass layoffs that threaten to disrupt summer travel and destabilize an array of essential institutions and industries up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest.

Nursing homes terminated hundreds of workers, including nursing assistants, dietary aides and housekeepers, industry and union leaders said. At airports including those in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Boston, contractors cut scores of Haitian workers, including janitors, cabin cleaners and wheelchair attendants, according to union leaders at Service Employees International Union 32BJ.

At Florida schools, landscapers, bus drivers and other staff were fired. And in New York City, dozens of security guards were terminated only to be rehired because of confusion around their eligibility to continue working, union officials said.

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Earlier this week, DHS informed employers that it considered the “Haiti TPS designation … terminated, effective” immediately, and businesses have been laying workers off ever since despite no order implementing the Supreme Court ruling from the lower courts.

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said that “activist lower court judges are openly defying the Supreme Court on this, but the end result will be the same. Haitians with TPS cannot and will not be able to stay.”

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Some nursing homes have cut ties with scores of employees in recent days, while others have downsized. One facility in Staten Island raised its sign-on bonus from $2,000 to $6,000 to attract workers, while others shut down building wings and took beds offline. Still others explored recruiting replacement workers from high schools, said Katie Sloan, president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit aging service providers.

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